The mobile phone as the next electric guitar? We all know that the electric guitar changed the face of popular music, but what's this all about? How can a phone be a guitar or other instrument? Why would anyone want that, anyhow, and who would want it?

Since my youth I have been interested in musical instruments and the power they have. I can still strongly recall seeing a movie on television, nearly 35 years ago, where a boy was playing a flute to a seemingly attentive killer whale. I will never know what the real impact was, if any, on the whale, but seeing a child playing a small musical instrument and commanding such attention and communication – potentially interspecies (!) – made an indelible impression on me. I often come back to this image as it provides a convenient and vibrant example of the many factors and relationships at play in music making – the artist, musicianship, performance, audience, instruments, melody, sound design, analogue/digital, meaning, communication, expression, attention, and so on.

Since that initial impression, and prior to reaching the view that "the mobile phone is the next electric guitar", a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I have found that the journey has, to some extent, determined the destination, so it seems appropriate to tell a bit of the story. In 1986, after reading Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, I was hit by a crazy dream. Fuelled by the thoughts above, I decided to try to build a small hyper-instrument, a hand-held sphere as I imagined then. I wanted to build something that would allow others to create beautiful, interesting live music and I envisioned this to be something that would allow one to interact, live, with an audience...